Article content material
As they’ve for months now, tons of of individuals rallied in downtown Ottawa Saturday to protest the Israeli invasion of Gaza and to display their help for the Palestinian folks.
Marching by means of a gradual spring drizzle, the demonstrators marched in a block-long column up Elgin Road and into the ByWard Market, earlier than returning to rally in entrance of the Canadian Human Rights Monument.
Escorted by Ottawa police, the demonstrators paused at main intersections for a number of minutes at a time, briefly blocking site visitors earlier than shifting alongside.
Article content material
Exterior the Prime Minister’s Workplace, demonstrators let free smoke canisters that stuffed the air with a purple and inexperienced haze.
Article content material
Saturday’s crowd in Ottawa was loud and disruptive, however usually orderly because the marchers banged drums and waved dozens of the inexperienced, white, purple and black Palestinian flags.
Palestinian supporters marched by means of Ottawa’s downtown Saturday with police barring site visitors from the Human Rights Monument to Parliament Hill as they slowly moved by means of the core.Picture by JULIE OLIVER/Postmedia Picture by JULIE OLIVER /Postmedia
It was the primary such demonstration for the reason that Ottawa police hate and bias crime unit launched an investigation after complaints final weekend of hateful and antisemitic chants by a number of the demonstrators that glorified the Oct. 7 Hamas terror assault on Israel that killed some 1,200 folks. “Our resistance assaults are proof that we’re nearly free,” a person will be heard saying within the video from the protest final weekend
“Oct. 7 is proof that we’re nearly free. Lengthy reside Oct. 7, lengthy reside the resistance, lengthy reside the intifada, lengthy reside each type of resistance.”
Threats of violence and different illegal conduct should not protected beneath the Constitution of Rights and Freedoms, which enshrines Canadians’ proper to free meeting.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative Chief Pierre Poilievre have each condemned the glorification of the Oct. 7 assaults.
“There’s a distinction between peaceable protest and hateful intimidation,” Trudeau wrote on X, previously Twitter.
“It’s unconscionable to glorify the antisemitic violence and homicide perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7. This rhetoric has no place in Canada. None.”
With information from The Canadian Press
Share this text in your social community
